


AA Ba Sing Se

by Flameo_Hotman



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AA Ba Sing Se, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, I am once again projecting my issues onto a fictional character, Original Character(s), alcoholic zuko, i am not sure what to put in the tags, the alcoholic zuko au no one asked for, the earth king is mistaken but no one is going to correct him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flameo_Hotman/pseuds/Flameo_Hotman
Summary: Zuko took another swig from the bottle he held in his hand, as The Dragon's Claw plowed into the village. If he was going to face the Avatar he'd need the liquid courage, granted one might think that if that description of the liquor that was swaying his vision was to be true, then Zuko should feel like the bravest man in the Fire Navy. Instead, he felt nothing. Everything was numbed away by the alcohol that blurred the lines between feeling too much and feeling nothing at all. Being completely empty inside.He squinted at the light that flooded the walkway that led into the village from his ship and he took a step towards his destiny, which ended up looking more like tripping and throwing up on one of his own men.He really did have the worst luck.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 125





	AA Ba Sing Se

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by H-Faith-Marr and 1Zukoneedsafamily2

The pain was too much. It all hurt, and Zuko wanted to die. He should have died. It would have been best if his father had just gone through with killing him any of the numerous times he had planned to. Now? Now Zuko was a banished prince, doomed to live out the rest of his days chasing down an impossible feat. His mission was bullshit. His father never fucking loved him in the first place. Zuko would never live up to the man's exceptions, so why try?

It was all just fucking pointless anyways.

So Zuko locked himself away in his room on The Dragon's Claw and drank himself sick, so he couldn't feel that pain quite so sharp. He was only thirteen.

The next two and a half years were a dull pointless blur to him. He was sure that his uncle had kept trying to give him advice, and the old man told him to try and not drink so much, but it didn't matter. Zuko could never go home because he was supposed to find the Avatar, and the Avatar had died off a hundred years ago. He wasn't coming back.

Zuko knew that his banishment was really just a life sentence in a really big cage.

So if he was drunk the day that the Avatar came leaping straight out of the history textbooks and into the South Pole? Well wasn't that just fucking great?

Maybe the banished prince could go home, where he could just be a disappointment in the privacy of the palace.

Zuko took another swig from the bottle he held in his hand, as The Dragon's Claw plowed into the village. If he was going to face the Avatar he'd need the liquid courage, granted one might think that if that description of the liquor that was swaying his vision was to be true, then Zuko should feel like the bravest man in the Fire Navy. Instead, he felt nothing. Everything was numbed away by the alcohol that blurred the lines between feeling too much and feeling nothing at all. Being completely empty inside.

He squinted at the light that flooded the walkway that led into the village from his ship and he took a step towards his destiny, which ended up looking more like tripping and throwing up on one of his own men.

He really did have the worst luck.

Zuko watched in anger as the Avatar and his friends flew away on their flying bison, before helping his uncle thaw out his frozen men. Of course, the Avatar had gotten away. What had Zuko expected? Had he really thought that anything in his life would ever just go his way for once? If he had then he was a fool.

Once the last of his men had been freed from the ice, he stormed back inside the hull of The Dragon’s Claw and went straight to his room where he ripped open his storage chest and rooted through his things until he’d finally found what he was looking for.

A bottle of Fire Whiskey.

He was wasted by the time they pulled into port for repairs, and if he had known Commander Zhao was going to be the one to greet them, he may have thought better of it. There was something just off about the man, that made Zuko think he needed his wits about him, to avoid falling prey to some sort of trap the man had set.

He had sobered up for the Agni Kai, however. Uncle would have never allowed him to do something like that, while drunk.

Kyoshi had been a blur to him.

He was assured by his men that he had attacked the place in his search for the Avatar, but he didn’t really have any clear memories about the event. Only that the Avatar had slipped through his grasp once more.

He was never going home at this rate.

The Banished Prince considered joining his uncle in the hot springs for only a moment. The thought of doing something relaxing and forgetting about the Avatar had been tempting, but he refused. If there was even the slightest hope of going home, then he wanted to take it. Why? Zuko wasn’t sure anymore. He didn’t know why he still wanted to go back to the palace. His father didn’t want him there, and Zuko wasn’t so sure anymore that he wanted to go back.

It was the only path that he was given. There weren’t other options and if there were then he wasn’t aware of them.

He went back to his ship and drank while he reread his scrolls about the Avatar, along with the one he’d started himself. Nothing stood out as helpful though, so he decided it was likely time to move on from the Hai Bei Forest. However, Uncle had yet to return to the ship.

Zuko at a later date would think tracking and fighting Earth Kingdom soldiers while wasted may have not been the greatest of plans, but it had turned out alright and he had his uncle back. Even if that did mean hearing the man lecture him about how the event could have gone horribly wrong, and how irresponsible it was of him to try and rescue him in his current state.

At least they were able to get valuable intel about the Avatar from the nearby villagers.

He was aware he’d gone to the temple, and he had a scattering of memories about the event, but what order they had happened in was a mystery to Zuko. He knew he’d chained up the two water tribe teens and Fire Sage Shyu, but he wasn’t sure if that had been before or after Zhao had shown up. Though he was almost certain that when Avatar Roku had shown up, he had made his escape.

The only thing he did know for certain was that Zhao’s hands had strayed places they shouldn’t when he had restrained Zuko to his own pillar and his skin still crawled at the thought.

It was for that thought alone Zuko was holed up in the lookout tower, drinking the bottle of hooch that his men had tried to hide from him. Really? In the raft room under an overturned bucket was the best they could do?

Drinking with pirates turned out to have a certain charm to it that Zuko hadn’t thought to expect. It had been interesting to drink with people who could keep up with him for once. The hangover and gap in his memories, however, had been something that left him in a foul mood the entire trek back to his ship. His men assured him however that he had done an admirable job fighting the pirates and the Avatar’s friends.

It was a shame that he couldn’t quite grasp the memories of the event himself.

No news about the Avatar was worse than news that he was more than a few days away by boat, Zuko decided as he searched for a bottle of anything that he hadn’t already drunk. At this point, he was sure that his uncle and the crew had simply dumped out every last bottle on this Agni forsaken ship.

The next port they docked at, he bought himself a new stash and made quick work of hiding the bottles in spots no one would think to look. Something he had gotten unnervingly good at, as every few months Uncle managed to convince the crew to try and aid him in his goal of getting his nephew sober.

Zuko insisted that he didn’t have a problem, but no one seemed to believe him, and Zuko was beginning to think that maybe they weren’t the ones who were wrong. But he didn’t want to think about what that might say about himself. So he drank to forget about that line of thinking.

Lt. Jee had called him a good for nothing drunk, and Zuko would have fought the man, but Uncle wouldn’t let him. So what did Zuko do? He got drunk alone in his room and proved the lieutenant right.

He refused to think further about the subject.

The next day however his crew was back at trying to find and dump out as many bottles of liquor that they could find. He didn’t think that his uncle had even needed to prompt them to do so this time around.

They didn’t find his stash in the komodo rhino hold, however. So Zuko drank himself sick and blacked out for a while after. He needed the peace of mind and a chance to not think about any of what had happened. He was tired of thinking about all of his failures and shortcomings.

Zuko groaned as he turned away from the light streaming down at him from the sky. He knew he wasn't on the Dragon's Claw. He was currently lying down on a bedroll, in some sort of ruins. Zuko didn't know where he was, and frankly, he didn't really give a shit. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten blackout drunk and wandered away from the ship and it wouldn't be the last. Once his headache went down, Zuko could worry about getting back to his ship. For now, he felt like shit and wanted to go back to being blissfully unconscious.

Except now there was a foot poking him in the side, as he heard a male voice saying, "Aang, of all people to bring back with you, why'd it have to be the ponytail jerk who has been trying to kill us?"

Zuko smacked the foot away from him, with a groan, before he finally hauled himself into a sitting position, to groan, "My head hurts."

"Well, it is bruised from where the arrow hit you!" Shouted an overly excited child, who Zuko was now choosing to ignore because he was way too hungover and not nearly drunk enough to deal with that. "I'm glad that you're finally-"

"Nghh…" Zuko flopped back down onto the bedroll, and curled in on himself, groaning, "Too loud. Be quiet."

"Seriously?" Asked the male teen from just a moment ago, "How bad a concussion, does the jerk bender have?"

"M' hungover. No concussion. Let me sleep." Zuko mumbled.

As it would turn out, Zuko had heard that Zhao had the Avatar, so Zuko had gotten blackout drunk, infiltrated the stronghold, and rescued the Avatar. That had to be a first. Of course, now the Avatar and his two friends knew that was something within Zuko's capabilities and really he shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have told them he was just hungover and explained that no, he actually didn't know how he'd managed to pull that off. He'd been stupid drunk and didn't remember anything from the night before.

He felt like an idiot.

Following that mess, one would think Zuko would have cut back on his drinking, and maybe he did the first few days, but then Zuko was right back to old habits and being a disappointment. If he had actually been serious about getting sober, he would have told Uncle about the stash of Fire Whiskey in the komodo rhino hold.

But he hadn’t.

So when Admiral Zhao had shown his ugly face and told him that he was taking the crew of The Dragon’s Claw? Zuko got up, stumbled over, and vomited on the guy.

Next thing he knew, he was laid out on the ground and his cheek was stinging.

Everyone went quiet when it became clear what had just happened. Zhao had just backhanded the prince of the Fire Nation, and Uncle Iroh looked every bit the general Zuko had ever heard the man was. He held more murder in the glare he was giving Zhao than Zuko’s own father had during their Agni Kai.

The Admiral was wise enough to leave before Uncle could act on it, however.

A few hours later, Uncle had left to go for a walk, and Zuko had nearly sobered up when he heard a door on the deck creak slowly like someone was trying to not be heard. Zuko didn’t like the sound of that, so he’d hauled himself out of his bed and gone to investigate.

His reaction to the explosion was just a hair too slow to avoid getting burned and he was blown out the window and into the ice-cold waters below.

Most of the new burns, which would inevitably scar, were located on his right side and arm, and Uncle refused to give him anything to drink to numb himself to it. Instead, he snuck Zuko onto Zhao’s ship and into his private quarters, where Zuko would be staying while the man worked on healing him. There was to be no sneaking about as a Fire Navy soldier for the banished prince. Not until he had started to heal.

So that was how Zuko had come to be sober for the entirety of the Siege of the North Pole. A fact that had led to him having nearly succeeded in capturing the Avatar for good, but then everything had fallen apart, and Zuko and Uncle had ended up adrift on a raft.

There was nothing to eat or drink for those three weeks they were stuck on their raft slowly floating to the shores of one of the Fire Nation colonies. Nothing for Zuko to get drunk on.

It had been torture.

And now Zuko was sober for the first time in three years.

It was hell, but if he had just gotten sober earlier, then maybe he would have succeeded in his mission to capture the Avatar. He'd nearly done it drunk several times now, so he decided that he was going to try and stay sober until he had delivered the boy to his father. He just had to capture the Avatar first.

Zuko felt like an idiot.

Of course, Azula had lied about his father wanting him to come home. At least he hadn’t been drunk when she had shown up with her lies. Honestly, that would have gone horribly. He could still fight, but she would have never let him live it down.

But thoughts like that didn’t help him now.

He had been trained for combat, not survival. And when his uncle had elected to brew and drink tea made out of poison, it became obvious that was something neither of them had been trained in. So rather than let his uncle eat wild berries that may cause blindness, Zuko dragged the man off to a clinic.

While he was there he overheard a man talking to the doctor and an odd word had been said. He had never heard the phrase before in his life, but when he'd asked what it meant, he'd known.

Alcoholic.

He was one. It was obvious.

They didn't have that concept in the Fire Nation. It would have been viewed as a sign of weakness.

Zuko could not afford weakness when he both had to find the Avatar and escape his sister.

After dinner that night, which had been suspiciously void of alcohol, Song had sat with him on the deck and talked with him before trying to touch his scar. He snatched her hand before it could make contact with the leathery skin of his scar.

“Is your scar what made you start drinking?”

Zuko went stiff, and then he looked at her trying to keep his face blank. He didn’t know how she knew. And if she had figured out that then what else had she realized. What if Song had already sent out some sort of alert? What if-

“I overheard you asking one of the other nurses what it meant to be an alcoholic. I figured, because you don’t get a scar like that and not end up having issues.” She answered before he could say anything. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

“Its in the past… It doesn’t matter.” Zuko sighed, as he looked away.

“Of course it matters… Someone hurt you, a fire bender, and all you have left is your uncle. It hurt you deeply. You matter. You know that right?” She was so sweet with how she was trying to comfort him. But he didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted to go home and for everything to go back to the way things had been when his mom was still around.

The kindness of a stranger didn’t erase his past, even if he was tempted to allow it to ease his pain.

He did feel a twist of guilt in his gut when he stole her ostrich-horse.

Zuko hadn’t anticipated how difficult being poor would be. He hadn’t realized just how humiliating the experience would end up being. They traveled from town to town begging for food and money.

But Zuko wasn’t some common beggar! No! He was the crowned prince of the Fire Nation! He wasn’t born to live like this. This wasn’t meant to be how his life played out. So one stolen blue spirit mask later, he was taking what he needed to survive. Only that hadn’t gone over so well with Uncle.

The man had tried to spout a piece of sage wisdom, but Zuko hadn’t been willing to listen.

No instead he took off and left the only person who cared about him in the whole world behind.

Maybe that had been a mistake, but Zuko was too prideful to admit he may have been wrong. Whether he was wrong or not hadn’t changed the fact he had nearly starved to death by the time he ended up in that disgruntled Earth Kingdom town.

He was grateful to Lee for inviting him back to the boy’s farm to have dinner with his family. He did feel a twinge of guilt over stealing their pitiful stash of brandy wine that was stored in the barn they had let him sleep in, but by the time they noticed he would be long gone. He had been tempted to take Lee’s family up on their offer to have him stay with them. If he had, then he would be giving up any chance he had of going home to the Fire Nation.

Still, he had only been slightly drunk when he went off to fight those Earth Kingdom soldiers. At full strength and sober, he could have easily won without the use of his fire bending. He wouldn’t even have made the mistake of announcing who he really was.

That had been a mistake because not only had he been cast out by the whole town, but now he risked word getting to Azula that he had been there.

He felt like a complete idiot.

He was not sober by the time he’d caught up with the Avatar, who his sister had been tracking.

  
Zuko had hoped to make a dramatic entrance racing out of the alleyway and leaping off his ostrich-horse and announcing that yes he did indeed wish to fight her, but he stumbled when his feet hit the ground and his words had come out slurred.

The entrance was startling and dramatic, but just not in the way he had hoped for.

Still, Azula seemed sufficiently surprised and Aang had sputtered out a single, “Zuko?” before Azula was laughing.

“I was wondering when you would show up, but Agni forgive me, I never thought you would be stupid enough to do so drunk, Zuzu!”

The brief laugh from the Avatar did not go unnoticed by the drunk fire bender but he was already dropping into a fire bending stance and pointing a fist at both his sister and Aang.

“Back off, Zula! He's mine!” Zuko slurred.

But she wasn’t intimidated by his drunken display and laughed at and mocked him before the fighting began.

Maybe if he hadn’t been drunk then he might have done better. He might have not needed others to come to his aid. Uncle might not have gotten hurt. He hadn’t thought to refuse Katara’s offer to heal his uncle. And when he saw that she had been successful in doing so, he was relieved. He hadn’t gotten his uncle killed because he had shown up to a battle drunk.

And just this one time he would allow the Avatar to escape him because right now Aang wasn’t his focus. Zuko had a problem and he needed to deal with it. Not just to catch the Avatar, but because he blamed himself for his uncle getting hurt.

Uncle Iroh poured out the stolen barley wine and waited until his nephew had sobered back up before he dared to teach the teenager anything. Zuko wondered if he would have managed lightning if he hadn’t turned to drink to deal with the raging emotions and pain that haunted him like shadows of regret and right.

At least he had the idea of how to redirect lightning down.

When he fought the Rough Rhinos with his uncle, Zuko was pleased to find that he was able to win the fight with relative ease. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be just as useless sober as he was drunk.

Zuko didn’t know what to think about how it turned out that his uncle was a part of some sort of secret pai sho playing organization. He wondered if he hadn’t left his uncle behind, would he have been allowed to join? Instead, he was left outside and alone with his thoughts.

When they finally got to Ba Sing Se and the woman who welcomed them to the city told them about all of the resources that were available in the city to the refugees, Zuko had picked up on one that he hadn't thought would exist anywhere.

“What was that last one?”

Joo Dee paused and was quiet for a brief moment, as though she was going through the list again, and then she said, “AA Ba Sing Se? It is a support group for alcoholics. Many refugees have benefited highly from it. There are several chapters in the city. Would you like a pamphlet?”

Zuko glanced at his uncle who seemed very pleased that Zuko had asked about it, and then he gave a singular nod. It wasn’t like he had anything left to lose. Besides, it seemed to make his uncle happy that Zuko had made the decision to go, and knowing that made Zuko feel like he was finally doing the right thing.

The first meeting he went to, Zuko didn't say anything. He simply watched and observed.

The second one he did the same thing. He was the youngest there.

On the third one, he decided to join in.

"Hello, I go by Lee and I'm an alcoholic."

Han was closer to 40 than he was to 30, and when Zuko had finally spoken up, he seemed to catch the way the teen had worded his sentence.

"You go by Lee?" Han asked now becoming suspicious of the teen.

Zuko stayed still in his seat, before saying, "You people said we shouldn't lie here. It’s not really my name, but I'm not going to tell you my real one, so just fucking deal with it. Okay!" He was a bit grumpy, but it was because he was sober and not numbed from his pain. Pain that he had refused to even begin to deal with until now.

Shu, the man in charge of the meetings, smiled at him, and said, "Well, we'll just have to call you Lee, until you tell us otherwise."

"Thank you…" Zuko looked at the ground and began to explain, "I didn't want to get sober until a few months ago. I got stuck out at sea, and there was nothing to drink… So I got sober for the first time in three years… Spirits, I drank three years of my fucking life away… And my uncle got hurt last time I was drunk. We got attacked on the road, and he could have been killed… He wasn’t hurt badly, thankfully, but I blame myself… I was too drunk to keep him safe. I don't want that to happen again… He's the only family I have left that cares about me."

Shu nodded and said, "Thank you for sharing, Lee. We all are here to get better. Sometimes we need to hit our rock bottom before we can get help. I know I did. I used to live in the middle ring, but I drank all of my money away. I went from having a safe and cozy life to living on the streets. One morning I woke up, and I realized I had wasted away the past six years of my life looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle and it had ruined me. That's when I knew that I needed to get sober. And I did! I've been sober for nearly ten years now. I started drinking after my wife died. Are you okay to tell us what made you start drinking?"

"My father…"

Han looked at the boy with pity, "I'm sorry. You must miss him. My dad died a few years back-"

"He's not dead." Zuko spat, suddenly angry. "He just doesn't want me around. I'm nothing but a fuck up to him, unlike my perfect little sister. He told me to my face that she was born lucky. That I was lucky to be born!" Zuko snapped his jaw shut to stop himself from saying any more. He had embarrassed himself with his outburst. "He doesn't love me. I'm not allowed to go home, but I have my uncle. My uncle loves me, and I have a new home here."

After that meeting Shu took Zuko aside and told him that if he felt like he was struggling, to come and talk to him. He would be there for him and listen. He would help keep him sober.

Zuko didn't know how to feel about that, but he accepted the man's offer.

It was during his fourth meeting that Zuko explained why he'd started drinking.

"I grew up with alcohol all around me. My father drank more than he should, but the culture around drinking was different where I grew up. It was normal to start having a small amount with dinner from a young age, but it wasn't until he threw me out and I got my scar that I really started drinking. I was thirteen. I spoke out of turn, and so he demanded that I fight him. I refused. So he scarred me and kicked me out. Told me if I came home he'd kill me. I wanted to numb the pain, so I started drinking. I didn’t want to face the fact that my own father didn't love me. So I drank and every time I look in a mirror… I'm reminded that my father didn't love me. That I'm just an embarrassment to him, and then I wanted to drink…"

Han was surprised, "Wait so you didn't get your burn scar from an ash maker? Your father did that to you?"

"He's a fire bender." Zuko sighed. "We aren’t allowed to lie here. So I won't. My father is a fire bender, and he burned my face because he wanted to teach me a lesson. ‘Pain will be your teacher.’ The last time I saw him, he was burning my face off. He even sent my sister after me to hunt me down and kill me. She's also a fire bender and the one who tried to kill my uncle." There was a moment of silence that left Zuko feeling very uncomfortable, so he continued probably only digging the hole he was in even deeper. "I'm one as well, but at least I haven't killed anyone. Let alone try to kill my family. I think my uncle is the only sane person in my family. My mom also, but she vanished when I was 11 and my grandfather told my dad to kill me. She vanished the same night that grandfather died… So maybe she wasn't actually all that sane now that I think about it. I really want a drink right now."

Shu spoke up now, "That… That is one messed up family. No wonder you started drinking. Just hearing about that makes me want to drink, but just remember that you have your uncle who cares about you. You decided to get sober because you couldn't protect him, and you don't want that to happen again."

Han had been there when Jet had shown up and tried to out Zuko and his uncle as fire benders. Of all the members of the support group to be there, Zuko worried about Han turning him in the most. The guy had been the one to treat him with suspicion when it had come out that Lee was nothing more than an alias. But when Jet started shouting about Zuko and Iroh and fire bending Han surprised Zuko.

“Just yesterday I caught you calling some earth bender kid a fire bender!” Han shouted as he stood up from his seat. However, Zuko was already grabbing swords off of a guard to defend himself and his uncle.

Zuko caught the look of shock in Han’s eyes when he proved exactly who was the better swordsman of the two. There was almost a look of unease, but it had swiftly changed to one of pride.

And by the time the Dai Li arrived to arrest Jet, the crowd was filled with people who all complained about how the Freedom Fighter had been accusing random people of being fire benders.

It was during his fifth meeting that Zuko slipped up.

"Admiral Zhao actually tried to have me assassinated by pirates once because I got blackout drunk and broke the Avatar out of Pau Hai stronghold. He called me a traitor to my people, but he got dragged to the bottom of the ocean by a spirit."

"Wasn't he Fire Nation?" Han blurted out in shock "And aren’t assassinations politically motivated?"

There was a look of confusion in the man’s eyes, but he didn’t look betrayed.

Zuko signed before he straightened up, looking every bit the proud prince he had been raised to be, and said, "Let's redo my introduction. I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation and I am an alcoholic. I started drinking after I spoke out of turn during a war council, and when my father, Fire Lord Ozai, challenged me to an Agni Kai, I refused to fight him. So he burned my face and banished me. The only way I would be allowed to return home with my life, is if I was in chains. I spent the last three years drunk because I couldn't face all of the pain and anger I felt. And I have definitely made mistakes, but standing up for the lives of the 41st Division, who were all new recruits… That is not one of them. So yes. I am the banished traitor prince of the Fire Nation and my father is Fire Lord Oza. And now? I'm living as a refugee in Ba Sing Se. I miss my home, but I'll never get to see it again. So I'm trying to make a new life for myself."

Surprisingly no one turned him in. Instead, they kept swinging by the tea shop to check in on him, to make sure that he was doing okay.

When he saw the poster about the Avatar’s missing Sky Bison, Zuko had made quick work of finding the creature, after he had interrogated a Dai Li agent. In the end, he had decided to simply free the creature. He wanted to make a life in Ba Sing Se. He wanted to keep going to the support group. He wanted to make friends. He wanted to have a real home.

But then Azula had happened and he’d ended up getting tossed in a hole that already held a captured Katara. He had fallen in a roll and popped back up onto his feet with steadiness and ease.

“Are you actually sober?” She sputtered in shock.

Zuko gave a nod and said, “Normally I think people ask about someone about being drunk instead, but I can see why this would be a shock.”

“No kidding.” She laughed. “So is sober you less evil?”

“I’m not evil. I never was. I was confused.”

“Confused?! You hunted me and my friends like some sort of human shirshu!”

Zuko was silent for a moment and thought about what to say.

“I was banished from the Fire Nation,” Zuko began. “Capturing the Avatar was the only way I could go home. But things have changed now… I finally got sober and I realized something.”

“What?” Katara asked, voice going soft as the hate thawed from her gaze into curiosity. “What did you realize?”

“I was never meant to succeed. I searched for two and a half years for the Avatar, before I actually found him. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I was given what was meant to be an impossible task.”

But then he went and sided with Azula because she promised him that he could return home a hero and that their father would love him. A decision that he instantly regretted.

He really did try to stay sober once he returned to the palace, but every meal was served with traditional Fire Nation alcohol and people looked at him weirdly, when he wouldn't drink it. His father ended up ordering him to drink because the Fire Lord didn't drink tea with his dinner, and the same rule applied to Zuko as the crowned prince.

And so Zuko fell back into old habits.

And really Ozai should have been bothered by the fact that his son could out drink him, but the idea didn’t even seem to occur to the man. The fact that the prince of the Fire Nation drank himself to sleep every single night didn't seem to bother him either.

Zuko did consider hiring an assassin to get rid of the Avatar because Zuko knew Aang wasn’t dead. Not when the water bender he was traveling with could heal people with magic water. But in the end? Zuko decided he just didn’t care what happened anymore. He had already gone and fucked up all of the good things in his life. So what did it even matter? Let Ozai find out the Avatar was alive.

Mai called him a drunk while they'd been on Ember Island. The shoe fit, but Zuko couldn't really bring himself to care.

When Zuko had returned Ozai demanded to know why he had received a letter stating that someone had spotted the Avatar alive and in the Fire Nation of all places?

“Would Zula lie to you?” Zuko slurred, before brushing past the Fire Lord and walking away.

Somehow that had been enough to convince Ozai that it was just a soldier gunning for a promotion and lying to try and get it. He burned the letter.

That night a half-drunk Zuko snuck his way into the prison tower to talk with his uncle because if he was going to be a drunk who ruined everything then the least he could do was fix some of the things he had broken.

And on the Day of Black Sun, Zuko betrayed his father to go join the Avatar.

Of course, showing up drunk might not have been the best way to go about it, but it apparently bothered Katara seeing as in the caverns Zuko had seemed proud of having gotten sober and he had been trying to turn his life around.

The Zuko that stood before them was a drunk mess.

So instead of being sent away, he was allowed to join, but only if he got and stayed sober.

Zuko handed over his bags for them to go through, and they dumped out the Fire Nation Whiskey he'd brought with him.

Which he soon regretted because Zuko despotically wanted a drink now that he had to deal with a bunch of children. Some of which were practically feral. The Duke and Toph were prime examples of this. Though Toph chose to be whereas The Duke likely didn’t know any better.

Still, he had made a promise, and he was going to be doing his best to keep it. However, the Boiling Rock did not go as planned.

He ended up a prisoner and somehow the rumors about Zuko being a drunk had made it to the guards.

A group of guards had decided to set a bottle of fire whiskey in Zuko’s cell with him. Then they sat there and watched. It was weird and Zuko felt uncomfortable and he wanted a drink.

Which then brought his mind back to the fact there was a bottle of fire whiskey in front of him.

But he was trying to stay sober and he wanted to stay sober.

Yeah, that hadn’t worked out. Not when he had made a point of ignoring the bottle, that he couldn’t actually ignore.

It was only a short reach away and one of the guards said, “The rumors about the prince must have been wrong. Your cousin Shinzu lied. The prince can control himself around liquor.”

Then the guard made to take away the fire whiskey and Zuko’s hand shot, snatching the bottle away from the guard. Zuko shut his eyes and tried to ignore the sudden silence that permeated his cell. He wished Sokka was here to come up with a plan to get him out of this situation.

Everything was still for a few moments, but then a hand wrapped around Zuko’s own. Not his free hand. No, the hand that was gripping the bottle. Zuko should have fought as the man guided the bottle to his mouth but he didn’t.

He was weak and gave in.

Zuko hadn’t meant to break his sobriety again so early on, but the guards must have thought it would be a great idea to get him drunk, and when Sokka had come to check on the prince, Zuko was puking his guts out in his cell and crying.

Sokka cleaned him up and held him as he cried.

When they stayed on Ember Island, Zuko hadn't been allowed to go into the house until they had gotten rid of all of the alcohol. Sokka had kept him company outside, and Zuko opened up to the other teen about how this had all started in the first place. Sokka listened and comforted Zuko, making a joke about how messed up Zuko's family was, and Zuko actually laughed at it.

The hurt didn't sting quite as badly as before, and Sokka had taken to sharing a bed with the fire bender to help ward off the nightmares that had returned now that Zuko wasn't drinking himself to sleep every night.

As it turned out telling Sokka what had happened and lead him to where he was in his life had been redundant because that stupid play put it on display for everyone to see. All of his greatest screw-ups put on stage for people to laugh at. His people were laughing at him long before his death scene.

He definitely hadn’t curled up in Sokka’s arms that night and sobbed. And if he did there was no way for anyone to prove that he had.

Even if Aang had seemingly vanished, Zuko was glad that he was sober when he tracked down his uncle to ask for advice. If he died he didn’t want the last memory his uncle had of him to be Zuko half-drunk, while Iroh sat in a jail cell because Zuko had put him there.

He was grateful to be sober when he went to fight Azula. He was guaranteed to get himself killed if he had gone in drunk. This wasn’t fighting Zhao or Earth Kingdom soldiers. This was Azula.

But then she went and shot lightning at the wrong person.

Zuko jumped in front of Azula's lightning bolt and became Fire Lord.

The relief he felt when the rest of their friends arrived at the palace was unforgettable. It felt like a long and horrible chapter in their lives had finally come to a close. The next one started as soon as the previous had come to its end with peace and his crowning as Fire Lord Zuko.

Fire Lord Zuko wouldn't be risking his sobriety for the sake of appearances, so he ordered his staff not to serve him any alcohol.

When he went to the Peace Celebrations in Ba Sing Se, he made sure to introduce Sokka to Han and Shu as well as the others form the support group.

"So little Lee is Fire Lord now." Shu had said with a smile, "I'm proud of you kid."

"Yeah, I am too." Han laughed, "Just remember to be careful when you go to the party at the palace, but who am I kidding, you probably already know about the dangers that those kinds of parties hold."

"Don’t worry, I'll have Sokka by my side the whole time. He's been helping me stay sober." Zuko answered.

Of course, Sokka felt the need to add, “If Zuko ever has any alcohol in his hand, I’ll just tell Toph. And she can just destroy it with her earth bending. There isn't a better system for staying sober than that if you ask me."

All Zuko could do was roll his eyes in response, but he couldn’t ignore the warm feeling of contentment and joy that made its home in his chest.

They had dinner with the Earth King and a small army of nobles that night at the Earth King's palace, and when the server set down a glass of wine in front of Zuko, the Fire Lord froze and fell silent looking at the drink.

"Fire Lord Zuko? Is our wine, somehow unsatisfactory?" Earth King Kuei had asked, afraid he had somehow offended the young monarch. "I can have my servants fetch a better one from the cellars if you-" 

But the fire bender interrupted him, saying stiffly, "I don't drink. I'd rather have some tea if that's okay."

The man looked at Zuko confused for a moment, before nodding to the server saying, "Well you heard the Fire Lord. He'd rather have some tea."

Zuko and his friends all visibly relaxed at that, and the wine was taken away.

If the Earth King had somehow gotten it into his head that Fire Nation culture didn’t allow for it's Fire Lord to drink, Zuko wasn't going to correct him on it.

Sure the new chapters in his life were not always happy ones, but he learned how to turn the pages in the story. Zuko learned how to move forward. And he had made a new family, one that he had found along the way. Together they would be able to get through anything.

He may not have been born lucky, but he’d worked hard to get where he was now. And he would keep working hard to get to the next place in his life that he wanted to be.

Fire Lord Zuko stayed sober for the remainder of his days surrounded by friends and family alike.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this. I have been working on this fic on and off for close to a year. Writing is part of how I deal with and process things that happen in my life. So having said that, I think it is pretty obvious what I have been using this fic to work through. So...
> 
> Hello, I am Flameo-Hotman, and I am an alcoholic. In my family we have a history of things like substance abuse and alcoholism, so you would think that I would have known better. And I did. But I started drinking anyways. I started during my freshman year of high school because I needed an escape from the bad things that were happening in my life. I kept it a secret from everyone in my life. Once I was finally old enough to legally buy alcohol was went my problem went from bad to worse. As in I literally drank myself to sleep every single night and starting bringing a flask to work bad. I knew I had a problem, but I didn't care. I did stop drinking thankfully. There had been a shelf of free books at one of the places I was working and there had been an AA book on that shelf. Finding that book was wha made me sit down and reevaluate my life and the choices I was making. Getting sober was one of the best decisions I ever made. I got the help I needed and it wasn't until after I had finally gotten sober that I told any of my friends or family. Many times I do find myself wanting to reach for a drink, but I made myself a promise that I won't ever give int to that urge. I am stronger than the mistakes of my past.
> 
> I almost didn't post this fic because of how personal it is, but then I realized that there might be someone out there in a similar situation I once was, and this might be the thing that makes them stop and think. So if there is somewhere out there who is struggling like I was, I want you to know that things do get better. I want you to know that getting sober might be hard and you might fall off the bandwagon of sobriety multiple times. But believe me, getting sober? It is the best thing that you can do for yourself.
> 
> To anyone who needs an ear that is willing to listen you can get ahold of me on Tumblr. My blog name is Flameo-Hotman and I am here for you.


End file.
